


A Most Deadly Colour

by Johns_Farthings



Category: The Terror (TV 2018)
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Love does not conquer all, M/M, Pining, the symptoms of scurvy, this fic is not kind to anyone i'm so sorry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-05
Updated: 2021-02-05
Packaged: 2021-03-17 10:20:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,042
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29223840
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Johns_Farthings/pseuds/Johns_Farthings
Summary: 'Jopson had noticed this tendency of affection since he was young, that he would be drawn to the brightness of a little thing, wonder at it – linger too long, and fall.'Thomas Jopson falls in, and then out, of love with Edward Little.
Relationships: Thomas Jopson/Edward Little
Comments: 12
Kudos: 25
Collections: The Terror Bingo





	A Most Deadly Colour

**Author's Note:**

> Terror Bingo fill: Angst
> 
> Warnings: some canon-typical descriptions of scurvy and alcohol withdrawal.

He had fallen in love before.

It always began with something small. The way someone stood; the shine of hair in sunlight; a soft gesture or steady voice. Jopson had noticed this tendency of affection since he was young, that he would be drawn to the brightness of a little thing, wonder at it – linger too long, and fall.

With Little, it was the way he rested his right hand on the table, one dinnertime when the sea was only just turning to ice and there was still a sense of excitement about the ship. As he spoke to Irving, enthused on some subject, Little twisted his wrist at intervals, a staccato motion, as if he wished to beckon Irving's approval of what he was saying. A tiny movement, but Jopson, standing quietly to the side of the room with a fresh decanter, found his eyes drawn to it, found himself curious. Such a thing as an affectation would have been irritating, but it was clear that Little did not realise he was doing it. There was something sincere about him that made Jopson want to smile.

After that it came as it always did, in a flood – a tide of motions, manners and details that made up Edward Little. Little tilted his head to listen to the hand organ in the cabin, moved his fingers in time to the music if it pleased him, or put out his lower lip if it did not. At mealtimes he gripped his fork with a fist, rather than holding it between fingers and thumb, a childhood habit never broken, perhaps. When smiling, he shifted his head backwards, as if he wanted to tip his chin to the ceiling and laugh, only he did not quite have the courage to do so. Jopson wondered about these things, wondered about Edward Little – lingered, as he always did, too long and too carelessly.

He knew how it would proceed. They were bursts of pain and joy, these loves, but fleeting – pretty flames and fireworks, quickly gone. Almost as soon as they began, they were chipped away by the turn of everyday life, duties and chores and sunrises and sunsets. One day, Jopson would come to the realisation that it was no longer there. Not twisted or changed, not worn out or exhausted. Simply, gone. The loss tended to leave him melancholy for a few days, pensive, but he had grown accustomed to it, this way of loving. It was not necessarily disagreeable – pleasant for a short time, hurting for even less, and then neatly and fondly absent, a memory folded away to look upon at a later point and smile at. 

It would be the same with Little. Some time, some pain, and it would pass.

It did not.

At first, he blamed the circumstances. After the ships ground to a halt, Jopson had never been so long in a place with so few distractions. He had his duties, but they were far fewer than he was used to. Long weeks of darkness, the constant worry about what would become of them – these things were bound to provoke emotions, and strengthen those that were already seeded. It was natural that this love would endure longer, burn brighter. There was, too, the delicious prospect that Little might feel the same way. Not at first – oh, not for some time – but after they had been stranded in the ice for a year, after Sir John was lost and the long, long winter set in, Jopson would be amongst the officers, cleaning or serving or pouring wine, and he would turn to find Little watching him. There was an earnestness in his gaze that hinted at more than curiosity, and Jopson could not help but dwell on those looks, the way Little would flick his eyes away when he realised he had been noticed. Supplies dwindled, men were lost and the bear stalked the ships, but Edward Little grew and spread through him like ivy, wound from the bones of his fingers through his veins and around his ribs and until Jopson was reminded of him every time he reached for an object, every time he breathed. He dreamed of plants and flowers pressing so close to his skin that they itched to reach through it, towards the light. It was dizzying in its endurance, this new kind of love, strange and exhilarating in a way that made him want to laugh, even when he was alone. He was growing forests inside him that no-one else could see. 

The situation grew worse.

The first indication of how it would end was after the chaos on the frozen deck, after Blanky had stopped screaming and the Captain called them to the cabin, the five of them sitting and wondering what would become of them. By then, Jopson knew every one of Little’s movements and manners, had watched him for so long that he might have stepped into his skin and worn it, if such a thing were possible. He knew that Little often clenched his fists when he was distressed – like the childish grip he used for his fork, it seemed a sort of comfort to him – but this night, after everything that had happened, it annoyed Jopson that Little kept his fist closed on the table when the Captain held his gun out to him. _Open your hand_ , he wanted to scream, _you must take it, open your damn hand_.

The ugliness of the thought shocked him. He pushed it quickly aside, averting his eyes to the dark cabin, anywhere but Edward Little. Later, alone, he turned the thought over, rationalised it, justified it. The evening – the whole winter – had been long and hard on all of them. He had only been tired and breathless. Frightened. A single thought, even one so sharp, did not mean anything. It did not.

The vines and branches shivered beneath his skin, as if at the promise of autumn.

The Captain’s sickness began. Long hours of cursing and spit and vomit left Jopson too exhausted to speak, trapped below decks in a cabin so dark and stinking that the first breath of fresh air he took after it was over made him lightheaded. There was no space for Edward Little in those weeks – no space for him at Carnivale, either, amongst the ashes. Later, when the shock had faded, when the dead had been buried, Jopson, as had been his habit when he had a moment to himself, reached for the thought of Edward Little – the memories of a hundred tiny movements and looks that had grown like flowers between his bones – and felt only cold and strange.

He knew then that it was slipping from him in the same way as the rest, leaving only a firework burn behind his eyes, and he did what he had never done before – he clung. He dwelled on the looks that Little had given him when he thought Jopson was not looking, the way he listened to Hodgson’s music with a pout on his lip that Jopson could have rested a peach stone on. Even as the fear of what was to come rippled like a sickness through the men, even as supplies were counted and boats prepared and harnesses readied, he tried to hold onto it.

He failed.

The ice and the long, desperate walk stole many things. It stole willpower, hope. It stole fingers and toes, and then men. It stole Jopson’s strength. And, piece by piece, it stole Edward Little from him. A frost spread through his insides as they marched, pinched the buds and leaves that had thrived on the ship, pried loose their grip on his bones and turned them to an inescapable rot. 

‘Paris Green,’ Irving had said – Jopson could not remember exactly when, only that it was a long time ago, when Irving was not dead and buried in the shale. He was talking about his paints, and Jopson had only had half an ear on the conversation, too busy watching Little eat soup with gusto, back when any of them did anything with enthusiasm. ‘It is fantastic shade for anything bright. I remember seeing-’

‘Wait.’ Doctor McDonald raised a hand. ‘Did you say Paris Green, Lieutenant?

Little turned his head to McDonald, spoon halfway to his bowl. Jopson remembered that his mouth had been open, tongue showing against his lower lip.

‘Yes, Doctor. It is a pigment of-’

‘I know what it is.’ McDonald’s brow furrowed. ‘It is a most deadly colour – the thing is half made up of arsenic.’

Irving had blinked, clearly unnerved by the sudden interruption. ‘Oh,’ was all he said in the end, ‘but it is very beautiful.’

It might have been different if Jopson had let Edward Little go gracefully from him. But as he fought it, even as his skin bruised and his hair began to thin, the forest warped inside him, sluggish and painful in his veins as bright green poison. 

Little sensed the change. Jopson saw it in the way Little looked at him, a hurt, earnest question behind his eyes, and Jopson knew, even with his aching head and bleeding gums and the sawing belly-hunger that never gave him a moment’s peace, that Little blamed himself.

It was not fair. Other cares endured – he saw the look on Bridgens’s face when Peglar wavered one day in the harness, the way he gripped Peglar to steady him, as if he could will the life back into him. It was not Little’s fault that Jopson’s love had proved as treacherous as all the ones that came before, fickle as a tide. Jopson felt fickle with it, sticky and ashamed. But he could not find a way to explain. He was tired, and Little had left too many scars upon his bones, stiffening and numb. He kept his silence, put one foot in front of the other – watched the question in Little’s eyes, and gave no answer.

The world began to disintegrate around them. Little's fists were constantly clenched these days, the knuckles pale and too close to the skin. Jopson could not imagine such an action brought him comfort any longer. Through his own hazy exhaustion, he saw Little flounder in the teetering chaos, growing more and more silent until he seemed in a permanent daze, unable to do anything but press on – until they sat across each other in a ragged tent, with the shadows of a long day crouching over them and Captain Fitzjames dying close by, and Edward Little looked at him with his hair falling over his right eye in a manner that, once, would have made Jopson's skin warm, and said, _our pace has slowed._

That night, he dreamed of leads opening up, of sailing gleefully through glass-clear oceans to warmer, kinder places. He dreamed Captain Fitzjames, resplendent in his uniform, hair sleek and smile rakish, vital, and the Captain, his Captain, steady at his elbow, proud. Dreamed the impossibility of men around them who had been dead for years, weeks, days. Of Edward Little, head high, smiling at something Jopson had not heard.

He knew that he would not be invited to such an occasion as this. The vividity of it was only another symptom of dying, along with his gums finally losing their grip on his teeth and the irregularity of his heartbeat that at times left him confused and breathless. Even so, he stayed, watched the scene unfold. Watched Edward Little, quiet but content, turning and reaching for a glass of something, making conversation – and, once, tilting his head back in laughter, the laugh Jopson always thought might be behind his smile, but which he had never seen. A sharp wrench of joy and despair went through him like summer, brought his gorge to his throat, made his tired heart leap.

Yellow daylight seeped through canvas. Jopson became aware of movement around him, of men crawling out of their blankets and preparing to go about whatever duties they could still muster the strength to perform. His joints throbbed. Little’s laugh shivered through him for a moment longer, a burst of green poison, until it slipped away completely, cooling like ashes in a grate.

**Author's Note:**

> I just had to fill the angst square of my bingo card, even though it didn’t help me make a row (which I’m now resigned to not doing anyway). I’m pretty pleased that I managed to get four fills, but this feels a bit like the fic I was building up to. Now that I’ve had a test-run of the characters, I’d like to try for something a bit longer.


End file.
